San Lucas el Grande

Not even the municipal seat beats it: San Lucas el Grande is the most populous community in San Salvador el Verde, with 9,138 residents in 2020. It is named for Luke the Evangelist, its patron, and spreads out at 2,317 meters on the western edge of the Puebla-Tlaxcala valley, about 18 km from Huejotzingo and 41 km from the state capital. To the west the land climbs steadily up the Sierra Nevada to the summit of Iztaccíhuatl, at about 5,200 meters the third-highest mountain in Mexico, which lies inside the same municipality. The photo shows the courtyard of the Chautla hacienda, also in San Salvador el Verde.

The municipality, whose Nahuatl name Xopalican means "green place", covers about 108.7 km² and belongs to the Puebla-Tlaxcala metropolitan area. It borders Tlalancaleca, Tlahuapan, Texmelucan, Chiautzingo and Huejotzingo, plus Ixtacuixtla in Tlaxcala and Tlalmanalco in the State of Mexico. Because of the altitude range three climates meet here, from temperate to cold: averages run from 2 to 16 °C, the high ground drops below freezing in winter and summer rarely tops 30 °C, with about 1,000 mm of rain between May and October. More than 40% of the land is forest, used for timber, and its streams feed the Atoyac.

Most people make their living from farming, and the soil is good: cabbage, onion, cilantro, cauliflower, green beans, radish, carrot, corn, beans, fava beans and wheat are grown, along with mulato chiles, tejocote, pears, apples and walnuts, and flowers such as gladiolus, chrysanthemums and roses. INEGI highlights the carving of black cantera and volcanic stone into molcajetes, metlapiles, millstones, gravestones and fountains. In the kitchen the stars are carnitas with salsas and handmade tortillas, cookies of cacahuacintle corn, capulín jam, chilacayote squash sweets, xemezcal made from maguey heart, and pinole atole, with pulque and cane brandy.